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Page 59
"Then I know the big young Russian of registration day who had tried to
tip me. Bless him! I got him transferred to my command and--" the Judge
hesitated a bit and glanced at his distinguished guest. One surmised
embarrassment in telling the story of the General's humble compatriot.
The General rose to his feet and stood before the fire facing the
handful of men. "I can continue this anecdote from the point that is
more easily than my friend the Judge," spoke the General. "I was in the
confidence of that countryman of mine. I know. It was so that after he
had been thus slightly useful to my friend the Judge, who was the
Captain McLane at that time--"
The Judge broke in with a shout of deep laughter worthy of a boy of
eighteen. "He 'slightly obliged me by saving my life." The American,
threw that into the Russian's smooth sentences. "I put that fact before
the jury."
The four men listening laughed also, but the Russian held up a hand and
went on gravely: "It was quite simple, that episode, and the man's
pleasure. I knew him well. But what followed was not ordinary. The
Captain McLane saw to it that the soldier had his chance. He became an
officer. He went alive through the war, and at the end the Captain
McLane made it possible that he should be educated. His career was a
gift from the Captain McLane--from my friend the Judge to that man, who
is now--" the finished sentence halted a mere second--"who is now a
responsible person of Russia.
"And it is the incident of that sort, it is that incident itself which I
know, which leads me to combat--" he turned with a deep bow--"the
position of the Sena-torr that the great war did not make for democracy.
Gentlemen, my compatriot was a peasant, a person of ignorance, yet with
a desire of fulfilling his possibilities. He had been born in social
chains and tied to most sordid life, beyond hope, in old Russia. To try
to shake free he had gone to America. But it was that caldron of fire,
the war, which freed him, which fused his life and the life of the
Captain McLane, so different in opportunity, and burned from them all
trivialities and put them, stark-naked of advantages and of drawbacks
artificial, side by side, as two lives merely. It made them--brothers.
One gave and the other took as brothers without thought of false pride.
They came from the furnace men. Both. Which is democracy--a chance for a
tree to grow, for a flame to burn, for a river to flow; a chance for a
man to become a man and not rest a vegetable anchored to the earth
as--Oh, God!--for many centuries the Russian mujiks have rested. It is
that which I understand by democracy. Freedom of development for
everything which wants to develop. It was the earthquake of war which
broke chains, loosened dams, cleared the land for young forests. It was
war which made Russia a republic, which threw down the kingships, which
joined common men and princes as comrades. God bless that liberating
war! God grant that never in all centuries may this poor planet have
another! God save democracy--humanity! Does the Sena-torr yet believe
that the great war retarded democracy?" The Russian's brilliant,
smouldering eyes swept about, inquiring.
There was a hush in the peaceful, firelit, lamp-lit room. And with that,
as of one impulse, led by the Senator, the five men broke into
handclapping. Tears stood in eyes, faces were twisted with emotion; each
of these men had seen what the thing was--war; each knew what a price
humanity had paid for freedom. Out of the stirring of emotion, out of
the visions of trenches and charges and blood and agony and heroism and
unselfishness and steadfastness, the fighting parson, he who had bent,
under fire, many a day over dying men who waited his voice to help them
across the border--the parson led the little company from the intense
moment to commonplace.
"You haven't quite finished the story, General. The boy promised to do
two things. He did the first; he gave the Judge 'something more than a
dollar,' and the Judge took it--his life. But he said also he was going
to marry--what did he call her?--Miss Angel. How about that?"
The Russian General, standing on the hearthrug, appeared to draw himself
up suddenly with an access of dignity, and the Judge's boyish big laugh
broke into the silence, "Tell them, Michael," said the Judge. "You've
gone so far with the fairy story that they have a right to know the
crowning glory of it. Tell them."
And suddenly the men sitting about noticed with one accord what,
listening to the General's voice, they had not thought about--that the
Russian was uncommonly tall--six feet four perhaps; that his face was
carved in sweeping lines like a granite hillside, and that an old, long
scar stretched from the vivid eyes to the mouth. The men stared,
startled with a sudden simultaneous thought. The Judge, watching,
smiled. Slowly the General put his hand into the breast pocket of his
evening coat; slowly he drew out a case of dark leather, tooled
wonderfully, set with stones. He opened the case and looked down; the
strong face changed as if a breeze and sunshine passed over a mountain.
He glanced up at the men waiting.
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